


Normal Lives

by uaevuon



Series: In All Of Us [1]
Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Blow Jobs, Capitalism, Drag Queens, Everyone is Trans, F/F, Gen, Internalized Transmisogyny, Suicide Attempt, Trans Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-13
Updated: 2014-10-13
Packaged: 2018-02-20 23:28:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,152
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2447006
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/uaevuon/pseuds/uaevuon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ymir left home the day she turned eighteen.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Normal Lives

**Author's Note:**

> This is the first part of what will probably become an unreasonably long series of closely-related oneshots, and which will include as many characters as possible. And everyone is transgender.

Ymir left home the day she turned eighteen. Nothing from before that day mattered; it was in her past. She never looked back. Her old name, her old face, her friends (few that they were, and distant), everything and everyone she’d come in contact with was left behind. She had nothing but the clothes on her back and a wad of cash -- the entire contents of what was once her bank account, and life savings. She ditched the clothes at the first mall she came upon, replacing them for a sundress that didn’t suit her but, god, did it feel good to wear it. 

She slept in that mall, too, after hiding from security past closing. It was cold, and dark, and terrifying, and she was alone for the first time in her life, and she looked like a man in a dress and she knew how easily she could get torn to shreds for it. But she spent the night, and when a security guard woke her up and arrested her for something, she wasn’t awake enough to hear what, the only words out of her mouth were “please don’t put me in the men’s prison.”

They didn’t, and that was proof enough to her that no matter what was to come, she made the right choice in leaving her hometown. 

Years followed; monotonous years of shitty jobs and shittier apartments and the shittiest food she’d ever had the misfortune of eating voraciously (sweet potatoes soaked in soy sauce, not because she thought they were good, but because they were cheap at the asian grocery below her apartment and she’d heard somewhere that they could mimic estrogen and, until she got her first dose prescribed, she was desperate). Ymir never gave up. She never once let herself think she wouldn’t get her happy ending. But she did accept it might take a little longer than she had planned, and it might not come about the way she’d expected. 

Accepting it made it easier to live through it, but didn’t make it easier to live _in_ it. 

She didn’t spend money frivolously; in fact, Ymir never bought anything unless it was as cheap as possible. Aside from that one dress she’d bought on her first day away from home, she was back to grocery store t-shirts and clearance rack jeans and work clothes. There was nothing wrong with that, and honestly they felt more right than the dress, but she wished sometimes that she could afford anything more. The same went for free time -- she never spent money on it if she could help it. Walks in the park were rewarding enough, relaxing enough. Every cent went in a bank account under her new name, saved up for the day she finally had enough to make the woman in her mind’s eye a reality. 

That day was far off, she knew, but she couldn’t let that get her down. She would be strong. She had to be strong. 

In the end, the statistics caught up with her; luckily, so did her roommate at the time, and Ilse burst through Ymir’s bedroom door, breaking it off its hinges, and grabbed her around the waist before she could step off her chair. Ymir sobbed with the noose still looped loosely around her neck, and Ilse trembled as she held her up and cried as well. 

“You can’t, Ymir. You’re so close.”

Close to what? Ymir wondered, but then she remembered her next paycheck would come in the next day, and she’d have another chunk of money, getting steadily closer to her goal -- 

It was so far off, though. She’d done the math. It wasn’t worth it. She wouldn’t be able to raise that kind of money, probably not in her whole lifetime. All Ymir wanted was to transition and then forget about it all, forget about all the years she’d spent treated like a man in a body she didn’t care for. 

“Ymir!” Ilse shouted. “Ymir, please!” 

Ymir could hear the desperation in Ilse’s voice. But it was over. She’d given up. Ilse should just let her go, let her fall. All of Ymir’s money would go to her, anyway, and then maybe one of them could have enough to transition. 

“What if it were me?”

She’d save Ilse’s ass, of course, and that was the thought that got her to pick her head up and out of the noose. As soon as she was clear, Ilse let go, and they both collapsed into a heap. Ymir might have hit her head on the chair, and Ilse’s legs would have nasty bruises where Ymir had fallen on them, but they were both alive and that was what mattered. 

Two twenty-five-year-old trans women crying together on the floor was what it took to get Ymir to realise she couldn’t live like this anymore. 

The next time that Ilse left the house on a Friday night, Ymir went with her, and she wore the sundress she hadn’t put on in years. It still didn’t fit her right, and the soft pink colour didn’t suit her any better than it ever had, but she wore it with pride, and she followed Ilse to a bar in a slightly less terrifying part of downtown than where they lived. 

There was a bar. And at the bar, there was a girl. She was a bartender, and she was _short_ and usually Ymir didn’t like short girls but it only added to how cute this one was, with her soft-looking blonde hair and her huge blue eyes and the perpetual blush on her cheeks. She mixed drinks faster than the men on either side of her, and she was the only one who ever filled out orders for the surliest waiter Ymir had ever seen. 

Ymir wanted to know her name. 

She hoped to get the girl to take her order, but she was at the other end of the bar, chatting up a group of men who looked to be about Ymir’s age. So she was probably straight. Figures. 

One of the two bartenders who Ymir didn’t give a shit about noticed her staring. “If you want to talk to her, order a Historia,” he suggested. “She’s the only one who makes them.”

Ymir nodded emphatically, and the bartender grinned. “Hey, Krista!” he shouted. “We’ve got an order for the Queen!”

Her name was Krista. 

And she was coming over. 

Ymir went stiff from head to toe; Ilse noticed from next to her and tried to cover up a fit of giggles. Ymir couldn’t move, not even to glare at her roommate, and by then Krista was in front of them, smiling and picking out bottles that Ymir didn’t recognise. 

“Hi. My name’s Krista.” She poured a few shots out of various bottles; Ymir didn’t even see them. “What’s your name?”

“Y-Ymir.”

“That’s a pretty name.” She noticed Ymir’s fingers, clenched tight around the edge of the bar. “You look a little tense.”

Ymir took a deep, shuddering breath. She was making a fool of herself, she knew, but _god_ , this girl was everything she wanted and she hadn’t even known it until that moment.

“This should loosen you up.” Krista placed a glass on the bar counter (Ymir wasn’t well-versed in the finer points of debauchery, and her head was more than a little fuzzy with shocked lust, so she couldn’t have identified what kind of glass it was) and smiled, bright enough to dazzle. The bright overhead lights glinted off her white, white teeth and her shiny yellow hair and Ymir swore she very nearly fell in love right then and there. The woman was a goddess, plain and simple. “Maybe you’ll stick around for my show?”

“Show?” 

“Mm-hm.” Krista wiped her hands on the towel at her hip. “You know about the shows, right?”

Ymir knew about the shows. They were why Ilse came here so often, tossing out money for drinks and sticking around for the flamboyance and the glitter and the bright lights. Drag queens, she’d said, and if Krista had a show, that meant --

“You’re a drag queen?” Ymir asked, stunned. “But-- but you’re…” It was then that Ymir noticed Krista’s hands, large for a girl her size, and her jaw, mostly hidden by her hair but visibly square when she cocked her head to the side and smiled. “Oh.”

“We should talk later,” Krista said. “After my show, ‘kay?”

Ymir did stay for Krista’s show, but they didn’t talk afterwards. Krista -- tiny little adorable Krista -- transformed into the stunning Queen Historia, covered in glitter and little mirrors all over her dress, wearing shoes that were more like stilts with how high their platforms were, and the dress was _so short_ , short enough that when she crouched down in front of Ymir and then kneeled on the edge of the stage, her legs spread wide, Ymir could see the soft, smooth skin of her thighs all the way up to her lacy, white, slightly transparent panties. She could see Krista’s penis through them, tucked and bound tightly in place between her legs and it looked so much more comfortable than Ymir’s method but so much more effective. Ymir shouldn’t find it hot that she could see Krista’s dick -- she was normally disgusted by any penis, including and especially her own, but somehow Krista’s was different. Short and pink and soft-looking and oh, Ymir wanted to touch it, wanted to touch _her_ anywhere and everywhere she was allowed… 

When she met Krista’s eyes -- _Historia’s_ eyes, the lids heavy with long false eyelashes and thick makeup, halfway covering bright pink contact lenses -- there was a blush on Ymir’s cheeks, and Historia winked at her, and as soon as Historia stood and turned around, Ymir booked it out of the bar. 

She texted Ilse only when she was already home, and then she curled up in her bed and waited for her roommate to return. 

Ilse didn’t ask if Ymir was awake; she barged into the tiny bedroom and made it clear she wasn’t impressed. “She liked you. She liked you a _lot_. You could’ve gotten somewhere with her.”

_I’m too gay for that_ , Ymir thought, and she instantly felt horrible for it. She knew Krista was a trans woman, like herself, because she carried on as a woman past the drag, unlike the other performers. But she couldn’t see past the dick Krista had waved in her face. Sure, she’d been turned on, but immediately after she’d felt sickened. And then she realised she was a giant fucking hypocrite; she still had a dick, didn’t she? And she still expected other lesbians to look at her with lust no matter what her genitals looked like, because she deserved to be treated like the woman she really was. She should afford the same respect to Krista. 

“Fine. Wallow. Hole yourself up in your room. But she wants to see you again, and I know you want to see her, too.”

Ymir went on with her life, trying to forget about the beautiful drag queen who’d winked at her. She went to work, she saved her money, she bought a new pair of pants for work when the ones she had been wearing every day were frayed beyond mending.

She dated someone, briefly: a lesbian she’d met at a gay bar. It didn’t last, because she’d told Ymir she was “too gay for dick”. Ymir was hurt, but it reminded her of Krista, because she’d thought almost the exact same thing. But she tried to put it out of her mind. 

It didn’t work. 

Through a series of quite obviously damning decisions, Ymir lost a bet to Ilse, and as a result, Ilse dragged her out of the house for a “night of fun” -- which of course meant down to the drag bar. 

They arrived later than the last time, just as the shows were starting; a deep voice announced the first act. “Let’s hear a warm and intimately loving welcome for our newest sister, Princess Dynamite!”

A slender, dark-haired young woman came out, sporting small feathered wings, one black and one white, and a long blue gown. A fake cigarette was stuck onto the end of a long filter held between her fingers. Ymir recognised her as the pissy waiter from the last time she’d been here, and her attention was lost. She searched around for Krista, her heart jumping in her chest; Krista wasn’t at the bar, nor was she anywhere Ymir could see her. 

“She’s probably getting into costume,” Ilse offered. “I know she’s going on tonight.”

Every time the queens -- or, princesses, as they were called -- switched around, Ymir’s heart fluttered. She both wanted to see Krista and didn’t. She wanted to talk, and didn’t. 

Queen Historia was the last of the night, the fitting place for the highest royalty, and a little past one in the morning she stepped out to explosive cheering. She was dressed differently from the last time Ymir had seen her; this time, her dress was long enough to cover her legs, and her natural hair was hidden away under an enormous, stiff pink wig. Ilse pushed Ymir towards the stage and slipped a few dollars into her hand. 

Ymir was nervous, and her legs wobbled a little, but she planted herself at the edge of the stage and waited for Historia to notice her. She knew exactly when it happened; the Queen made a beeline for her, dropping down to her hands and knees and crawling the last few feet down the stage. She took the five dollar bill out of Ymir’s hand with her teeth, then plucked it out of her mouth with her fingers and stuffed it into her small cleavage, where it fluttered while she danced. Other bar patrons tossed their tips onto the stage, but Historia only had eyes for Ymir until her show ended. 

When Krista emerged, out of makeup, out of costume, her pink tinted contacts replaced by the chunky glasses she’d worn when Ymir first met her, she headed straight for Ymir. Most of the bar’s patrons would leave after the drag shows ended, but a few stayed behind to get a little drunker before heading home, and Ilse was off amusing herself with a group of elderly lesbians who were trying to re-live their younger years. Ymir would have bet her entire life savings that Ilse was asking for riot stories, and she felt like a winner when she noticed Ilse writing furiously in her little brown notebook. 

Krista tucked a rolled-up wad of tips into her bag; Ymir’s five was still stuck between her breasts, flat against the skin and damp with the sweat that glistened over every inch of skin she hadn’t covered. “Hi.”

“Hey.” Ymir was still nervous. She wasn’t sure that would ever change. 

“So are we going to talk this time?” 

Ymir nodded, and hopped off her barstool. 

They ended up at Krista’s apartment, which she shared with one of her co-workers. “He won’t be back for a while, though,” she said, and so they had the place to themselves. She got out some cups and poured them each some water, then told Ymir about herself. She started with a condensed version of her life story, and then when Ymir asked how long she’d been out, she said she didn’t know, but she explained what her gender was without any prodding. She wasn’t quite a trans woman; Krista liked to call herself a girl, but mostly she didn’t feel like she had a gender at all. 

Ymir didn’t totally get it, but she would work on it, because she had her heart set on this girl, and she was pretty sure Krista felt the same. 

Life with Krista meant almost never seeing one another; Ymir worked all day, and Krista mostly worked at night, and their few spare hours were usually spent sleeping. Neither of them was ready to move in together -- more like, they weren’t willing to kick out their roommates or leave them to fend for themselves. 

They stole hours together when they could. Krista would get a meal at the hole-in-the-wall restaurant Ymir worked at before she went to the bar, and she’d show up before the dinner rush so Ymir could talk to her without getting in trouble. Ymir would drive her to work before heading home, and when Krista returned after closing she would wait another few hours to give Ymir a wake-up call before crawling into bed herself. They rarely went on dates, and when they did it usually involved walks in the park or picnics if the weather was nice, and cuddling in one of their apartments when it wasn’t. 

Ymir was worried it wouldn’t work out; Krista was endlessly optimistic that it would. 

Their first fight was over peanut butter (Ymir liked smooth, Krista swore by chunky). Their second fight was over ‘passing’. 

Krista lived a daily life of playing up her trans-ness for the world to see. She made a spectacle of herself because she loved it. She loved being gawked at, she loved people looking at her and wondering how she became such a stunning (or cute) woman when she started from the nerdy kid visible in her high-school photos, one of which she kept framed in her living room as a ‘before’ example. 

Ymir had burned her own school pictures, because she wanted nothing to do with that life. She hated what she called her halfway point -- halfway through a transition, with only cheap hormones and padded, stuffed bras and uncomfortably tucking a too-large dick. She hated how obviously trans she was. She just wanted to get it all over with, all the hormones and the doctors and the surgeries and the documents, and lead a normal life. 

When she said that, Krista didn’t talk to her for a week. 

It was one thing Krista wasn’t willing to compromise on. She could not abide by the idea that one should be anything but proud of oneself, and if she had to be the one to help Ymir see the light, then god damn it, she would. 

Or else, she’d have to end it all, and she really didn’t want it to come to that. 

It wasn’t about the transition. Krista supported her decisions there -- how could she not? Nor was she bothered by the dysphoria. It wasn’t something she really experienced herself, but she knew it affected most trans people and she wasn’t going to throw Ymir out of her life over such deep-seated pain. It wasn’t even the desire to live stealth after the transition. It was the self-loathing, and the desire to hide herself away and deny herself everything she wanted, that Krista couldn’t let Ymir hold on to, because it was tearing her apart. 

Healing comes from within, she always told herself, but Krista also knew healing could never happen without support. So she did whatever she could think of to help Ymir feel like she was worth happiness. 

She started with the basics. “You look cute today” became her favourite phrase. She didn’t have to lie; Krista always thought Ymir looked cute, with her starched-and-ironed work slacks and her mismatched dresses and sneakers and her _fucking freckles fucking everywhere_. At first Ymir looked confused and disbelieving, but over time she started to smile when Krista said it. It took weeks, but it started to help a little. 

It was a process, one Ymir was convinced she would never complete. She looked at herself in the mirror and loathed everything she saw. She walked down the street and loathed every person who did a double-take, to look closer and dramatically contrast her small breasts and her _everything else_ , and then they would scrunch up their faces in a clear expression of ‘what gender is that?’ or ‘why is that man wearing a bra?’ She didn’t think about her childhood, because it hurt too fucking much. But when Krista said she was cute, she believed it. 

Krista started to introduce Ymir to the other Girls, most of whom were men who liked dressing up but who were more than happy to lend their show clothes for Ymir to try on. The glitter didn’t suit her, but the elegant dresses that some of the more subdued (as subdued as drag queens could be) princesses had did. Yet it wasn’t until a pair of older queens blindfolded Ymir and dressed her in a tailored suit without a shirt that she really seemed to like how she looked. 

On Consort Night, the bar’s Valentine’s Day celebration, King Ymir joined Queen Historia on stage in that very same suit, smiling like Krista had rarely seen her do. She went down on one knee at the end of the stage, and Krista worried that she was about to ask for her hand in marriage after only a few months of dating, but Ymir just kissed her hand and said her line -- “I swear to always love and protect you, My Queen”. Krista noticed, for the first time, that Ymir hadn’t bothered to tuck her cock, instead leaving the tell-tale bulge visible to the entire crowd, and after their show she didn’t comment on it, only looked again to make sure she wasn’t hallucinating anything. 

Ymir kissed her to distract her, and then sat her down in her dressing room’s chair and lifted up her skirt, carefully soaking and removing the tape between her legs. The first few minutes were fine, as Krista remained mostly numb while Ymir trickled warm water over her crotch, but as soon as she started picking the tape off, feeling rushed back in. Krista tensed up every muscle she could control, and her toes curled as much as they could inside her immobilising high heels. She clapped a hand over her mouth. Normally, she did this herself, and she could get all the tape off in minutes without feeling anything, but Ymir took her time and very deliberately tried to get her aroused. 

Of course, it worked. “Ymir,” Krista whispered. “Are you really going to do this here?”

“If you want.” She heard no objection, so as soon as all the tape was off and the adhesive was washed away, Ymir settled in under Krista’s skirt and put her mouth on her cock, scking her off for only the second time. 

Ymir was inexperienced with blowjobs, as most lesbians were, but she tried hard, and she could fit all of Krista’s small cock in her mouth, and Krista was still feeling the weird tickle of recently freed genitals, so it didn’t take much. She could also hear one of the princesses getting fucked hard in the next room -- it was Consort Night, after all -- and that probably helped at least a little. She came in Ymir’s mouth, biting down on her hand to muffle herself, and Ymir swallowed it all. Ymir still didn’t want Krista to get her off, but they cuddled on the couch for a little while instead of Ymir running off embarrassed at her erection. 

“I’m at one-third,” Ymir said a little while later. 

“A third of what?”

“What I need to transition. Even with all the hormones and everything else, I’m already at a third of what I need.”

“That’s amazing!” Krista gave her girlfriend a long kiss. It would still be many more years before Ymir would have enough, but one-third was still a lot. It was huge, really. Maybe Krista could sneak some money into Ymir’s wallet every once in a while, help her a little so she had more to blow on fun things too. Not that Krista was making any more than she was, but Krista wasn’t saving up for vaginoplasty. She could certainly spare twenty dollars a month, maybe more. Anything to get Ymir to take care of herself in the present. She had to make it to the future she dreamed of, and turning away every possible happiness along the way wasn’t going to help her reach that goal. 

Unfortunately, this was where Krista’s ideas ended. She thought about enlisting help from Ymir’s friends but the only other person she regularly spent time with was her roommate, and Ilse had nothing to contribute either. She had tried, in her own way, to help Ymir over the years, to little success. 

The final puzzle piece was dropped, instead, by the most unlikely source: Krista’s roommate. He left a note for her on the fridge for her to find when she woke up in the middle of the day.

> _RECON is starting a trans youth group. I know you guys aren’t exactly youths but it might help Ymir. I’ll be helping if we get more than 5 regulars and I want to get paid so you better show up. Also we’re out of detergent._


End file.
